Practice cages have long been known for containing baseballs hit during practice sessions, and for other ball sports. For open field use, portable batting cages are used.
Attempts have been made to provide an inexpensive, convenient and portable device for containing balls which are hit, pitched or batted during practice sessions for various sports. However, previously proposed devices are too cumbersome and costly or are not easily portable.
A free-standing sport practice cage is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,593,997, for example, which is an enclosed practice cage having sliding panels in front which adjusted so that the size of the front opening of the cage can be varied.
A portable backstop for use in baseball or softball is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,475,025. This device consists of a free-standing frame having back and top portions and two side portions.
Another portable cage is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,969,651. This device is a free-standing frame consisting of side and top panels of a flexible material which is supported by struts or poles at the corners.
A backstop consisting of a free-standing sideless frame and having a back netting for arresting balls in flight is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,127,267.
A free-standing wheeled backstop which can be disassembled after use is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,827,295.
A wheeled backstop which can be folded together after use is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,408,041.
The above practice cages and backstops suffer from several disadvantages. They are either unwieldy, costly, heavy, difficult for one person to assemble or disassemble and/or too small.
It is an object of this invention to provide a very economical, lightweight, portable, collapsible practice cage which can be easily and quickly erected and disassembled by one person.